Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Hidden Bar VS Keymap

Compare Hidden Bar VS Keymap and see what are their differences

Hidden Bar logo Hidden Bar

A ultra-light MacOS utility that helps hide menu bar icons.

Keymap logo Keymap

Every shortcut, one โŒ˜โŒ˜ away.
  • Hidden Bar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-18
  • Keymap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2026-08-28

Hidden Bar features and specs

  • Free and Open Source
    Hidden Bar is free to use and its source code is available on GitHub for anyone to inspect, modify, and contribute to. This promotes transparency and community-driven improvement.
  • Minimalist Design
    The app has a simple, minimalist design that integrates seamlessly with the macOS user interface without being obtrusive.
  • Improves Productivity
    By hiding unnecessary menu bar icons, Hidden Bar helps users focus on their tasks without being distracted by clutter.
  • Lightweight
    The application is lightweight and uses minimal system resources, ensuring that it won't slow down your machine.
  • Customizable
    Users can easily configure which icons to hide and which to display, allowing for a tailored experience.

Possible disadvantages of Hidden Bar

  • Limited to macOS
    Hidden Bar is only available for macOS, which limits its usability to Apple computer users.
  • Manual Updates
    As a GitHub project, updates may not be as frequent or automatic as those of apps available on the Mac App Store.
  • Basic Functionality
    While it effectively hides menu bar icons, it lacks additional advanced features that some paid alternatives might offer.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    With frequent macOS updates, there is a potential for compatibility issues, which may require manual intervention from the user or the community to resolve.
  • Dependence on Community
    As an open-source project, Hidden Bar relies heavily on community contributions. If the community loses interest, the app could become outdated or unsupported.

Keymap features and specs

  • Visual keyboard shortcut display
    Keymap.app provides an on-screen overlay showing keyboard shortcuts for the active application, helping users learn and remember shortcuts without needing to memorize them upfront.
  • Increases productivity
    By making keyboard shortcuts more accessible and visible, the tool encourages users to rely less on the mouse and more on keyboard-driven workflows, which can speed up common tasks.
  • macOS integration
    The app is designed specifically for macOS, allowing it to tightly integrate with the operating system's application switching and shortcut detection features for a smoother experience.
  • Simple and lightweight
    Keymap is a focused utility that does one thing wellโ€”displaying shortcutsโ€”without unnecessary bloat or complex configuration, making it easy to install and use.
  • Helpful for learning new apps
    When switching to unfamiliar software, Keymap can reduce the learning curve by surfacing relevant keyboard shortcuts contextually as you use different applications.

Possible disadvantages of Keymap

  • macOS only
    Keymap is exclusively available for macOS, meaning Windows and Linux users cannot benefit from the tool, which limits its overall accessibility to a broader user base.
  • Limited app coverage
    Not all third-party applications may have their shortcuts fully mapped or supported, which can result in incomplete or missing shortcut information for certain software.
  • Potential system overhead
    Running an additional background utility to monitor active applications and display overlays may introduce minor performance overhead, particularly on older Mac hardware.
  • Learning curve for setup
    Depending on how customizable the tool is, users may need to spend time configuring or adding custom shortcut sets for niche or in-house applications not natively supported.
  • Dependency on developer updates
    Since macOS and third-party apps frequently update their interfaces and shortcuts, Keymap's usefulness relies on the developer keeping the shortcut database current and compatible with new OS versions.

Analysis of Hidden Bar

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Hidden Bar is considered good by many users due to its functionality, simplicity, and open-source nature, which provides transparency and community-driven development.

Why this product is good

  • Hidden Bar is a popular macOS menu bar management tool that allows users to hide or group icons on the menubar. It is open-source, lightweight, and provides an easy way to declutter the menu bar, making it particularly useful for users who have many apps running simultaneously. Hidden Bar offers simple customization options and runs seamlessly in the background. Its ease of use and effectiveness for organizing icons has led to positive feedback from its user base.

Recommended for

    Hidden Bar is recommended for macOS users who want to keep their menu bar organized and clutter-free, especially those who manage multiple applications and system indicators. It is ideal for individuals who appreciate straightforward tools with minimalistic design and end-users who value open-source software.

Hidden Bar videos

THE DECEASED HIDDEN BAR REVIEW @Petaling Street

More videos:

  • Review - 6 hidden bars in Taipei
  • Review - Top 6 Hidden BAR (Bangkok/Thailand) [SUBTITLE]

Keymap videos

No Keymap videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Hidden Bar and Keymap)
Productivity
91 91%
9% 9
Mac
90 90%
10% 10
Mac Tools
92 92%
8% 8
App Launcher
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Hidden Bar seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 34 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Hidden Bar mentions (34)

  • Tailscale's New macOS Home
    Tame the clutter, by using another menubar app to hide the overflow. Examples: https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden https://www.macbartender.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Tailscale's New macOS Home
    Iโ€™ve been using this for years. Itโ€™s simple and works perfectly: https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Tailscale's New macOS Home
    I had been using Hidden Bar but gonna give Thaw a shot now. Looks a bit more full featured and under active development! https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Why I'm Spoiled by Apple Silicon (But Still Love Framework)
    25. Left-clicking in a window to raise it _sometimes_ performs actions in the app (e.g. Clicking a button or scrolling the window) and _sometimes_ only raises the window. It seems to depend on the app. 26. No ability to use focus-follows-mouse. 27. Home/End keys send you to the top/bottom of the whole document instead of the start/end of a line. The latter is much more useful to me and I use it all the time. You... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Ice - open source bar manager for macOS
    I use Hidden Bar (https://github.com/dwarvesf/hidden) for this. It works well enough despite not being updated in a while, though there is a bit of jank. Just tried out Ice and it seems to be a nice, lower jank replacement! - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
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Keymap mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Keymap yet. Tracking of Keymap recommendations started around Aug 2026.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Hidden Bar and Keymap, you can also consider the following products

Bartender Mac App - Bartender is an award-winning app for macOS that superpowers your menu bar, giving you total control over your menu bar items, what's displayed, and when, with menu bar items only showing when you need them.

Alfred - Alfred is an award-winning app for macOS which boosts your efficiency with hotkeys, keywords, text expansion and more. Search your Mac and the web, and be more productive with custom actions to control your Mac.

Vanilla - Vanilla is a free Mac app that lets you hide icons from your menu bar.

Swish - Insanely great window management

Rectangle - Window management app based on Spectacle, written in Swift.

Accelerator Keys - The fastest way to work in Mac Excel